Dairy farmer Cork: “Out of the blue this year two cows swelled up with mastitis and no drug or amount of drugs could sort it. I estimate I spent up to €400 per cow on drugs before they died. I also have two dry cows that got swollen joints, treated them with drugs with no effect so sent them to the factory when withdrawal was up. I have so far put down two calves with swollen joints and have two others affected. No drugs are working. It can be soul-destroying.” I talked to the farmer I featured last week in the case study again this week to get an update on the situation. Thankfully this week he has only had one additional case of mastitis and one additional cow with swollen joints.
Dairy farmer Cork: “Out of the blue this year two cows swelled up with mastitis and no drug or amount of drugs could sort it. I estimate I spent up to €400 per cow on drugs before they died. I also have two dry cows that got swollen joints, treated them with drugs with no effect so sent them to the factory when withdrawal was up. I have so far put down two calves with swollen joints and have two others affected. No drugs are working. It can be soul-destroying.”
I talked to the farmer I featured last week in the case study again this week to get an update on the situation. Thankfully this week he has only had one additional case of mastitis and one additional cow with swollen joints.
All the cows are out grazing, so none are inside at this stage.
The cow that got mastitis this week is a second-calver with no history of mastitis. The farmer is still awaiting results of individual cow milk samples sent away eight days ago so he is not sure if this most recent case is Mycoplasma bovis or not.
As she is a young cow, he is trying to treat the infection, but whether it will be effective or not is unclear just yet.
A number of other solutions such as drenching cows with minerals etc have been suggested to him, but at the moment there is so much extra work going into the milking routine he hasn’t time to organise anything extra and given the spend on antibiotics to date for the last month he is not keen spending more for little or no return.
Suckler farmers
Interestingly, it is not only dairy farmers who are
seeing symptoms of the
disease. Many suckler farmers or livestock farmers finishing bulls have had a number of animals with similar symptoms and consequences.
Remember vet Eoin Ryan in UCD says: “There are a number of veterinary herd health consultants that have completed training in dairy herd health in UCD, and who are present throughout the country, who are ready and able to help farmers with severe problems like this, in association with the local veterinary practitioner.”
Eoin reckons it is definitely the most severe disease that has raised its head in the last two years in association with expansion of herd sizes.
This is a subscriber-only article
SHARING OPTIONS: